Omoiyaru ōsakayama no seki no ne wa kiku ni mo sode zo kuchime tsukinuru

English Translation

The sound of the gate
at Ōsaka, where my thoughts
follow her — I hear
it, and my sleeves have worn through
to rot with all their weeping.

Meaning

The sound of the barrier at Ōsaka, where my thoughts follow her: I hear it, and my sleeves have worn through and rotted with weeping.

Commentary

19 Her Sister's Departure

Of all the people about her, the one she most relied upon had been due since that summer to go down to a distant province; since it had been settled that she would go once the mourning was over, she was now to set out. To think of it was more than the word forlorn could carry. On the last day, the day of departure, the author went over to see her. A set of robes and a few small things had been put into a pair of inkstone boxes, and the place was in a great noisy bustle, but neither she nor the one going could meet the other's eyes; they sat facing one another, barely holding back their tears. Everyone, please bear up — they say it is very ill-omened — someone said. Thinking that to watch her get into the carriage would be past enduring, she was told from her own house that she should come back quickly, since someone had arrived; and as the carriage was drawn up and her sister got in, the one departing wore a small robe of double-dyed indigo, while the one remaining had on only a thin gown of russet, and they exchanged them and parted. It was about the tenth of the ninth month. Even after she came home she wept so that they scolded her, asking why she must be so ill-omened. Then, thinking that by yesterday and today the traveler must be somewhere near the barrier hills, she was gazing out at a moon of great beauty when, from the other side of the house, someone who had also risen and was touching a koto sent her a poem. It was because this too was a person who must feel the same. She answered it, and while her thoughts went on following the traveler the year turned.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The one who departed is a woman on whom the author relied; the text gives no name. Neither does it say who it was that sent the poem from the other side of the house.
It is a moonlit night about the tenth of the ninth month in the second year of Kōhō, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It answers the poem sent from the other side of the house by someone touching a koto.
The narrative closes the section by saying that while her thoughts followed the traveler the year turned.

She takes back the barrier, the gate and the sound. The opening means to let one's thoughts go out to someone far away, carrying into verse the narrative's own phrase about thinking that the traveler must be near the barrier hills. The second line restates the other's barrier by the name of its mountain. The word for sound in the third line is the sound heard from the gate, and at the same time the sound of the koto the other was touching, so that the noise of the road and the music next door are held in one word. The fourth means: hearing it, and hearing it. The close says that her sleeves have taken on a rotted place, that is, are worn through with weeping, receiving the other's word for rotting unchanged — though that word is disturbed in the base text and neither its form nor its sense is settled. What the other applied to the timbers of the barrier house she draws over to the sleeves of her own robe; and the situation, two people apart in the same house thinking of the same traveler on the same night, is shown simply by the passing of that word between them.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other